Kit Kat Accused of Copying Atari Game Breakout (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Kit Kat's maker Nestle has been accused of copying Breakout, the 1970s computer game, in a marketing campaign. Atari, the company behind some of the most popular early video games, has filed a suit alleging Nestle knowingly exploited the game's look and feel. The advert showed a game similar to Breakout but where the bricks were replaced with single Kit Kat bars. Nestle said it was aware of the lawsuit and would defend itself "strongly" against the allegations. Breakout was created as a successor to "Pong" by Apple founders, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. In the advert, which is titled "Kit Kat: Breakout", a row of people, of varying ages and appearance, share a sofa and play a video game during their work break. In the game depicted, a primitive paddle moves side-to-side to bounce a ball into a collision with the horizontal bars ranged across the top of the screen.

Comments

Shouldn't have used the name 'Breakout'

[rsilvergun]

that's where they screwed up. Funny thing is Atari probably could have got a lock on brick breaker games if they'd set precedent early enough (Namco/Atari won the KC Munchkin case as I recall).

Here's the Move

[drinkypoo]

Quick, do a cross-marketing promo with Squeenix. We never meant to invoke the primitive 1970s Atari title Breakout, your honor. We were clearly referring to Arkanoid.